Some new developments in the medical aspect of my life, which I sometimes neglect to think about (oops!):
As a final year medical student in 2020, it is about time I started getting serious about my internship applications for 2021. Insofar as I hate to admit it, med school doesn't last forever and life keeps going whether I feel ready or not to accept my fate or its consequences.
In Victoria, Australia, it is purported that our internship applications this year will be based on a split of 40% academic Z-score, 40% interview performance, and 20% 'other' (i.e. cover letter, CV, extracurricular involvement, responses to selection criteria, non-clinical references, etc). The separate weightings assigned to each element have differed from previous years; owing to the current stitch-up with COVID-19 impacting on everyone's time, patience, energy and resources. Insert exasperated crying-laughing emoji here.
What is the Z-score you may ask?
Essentially, the Z-score is a numerical value which gives you an indication of where you sit academically compared to your peers. It sums up all your marks in medical school, and places you either above or below average (explained succinctly and excellently here). The idea is that the Z-score enables health services to rank and consider applicants along a normal distribution; this then results in interview offers being made to a certain number of students with an arbitrarily-determined ‘acceptable’ grade.
This type of merit-based system (which does have some merits; more here)…will typically mean that candidates who receive higher marks are preferentially offered spots at metropolitan hospitals or other institutions which are highly-sought-after for reasons alongside geographical proximity to the city.
This little number comes packaged in a no-frills email sometime in the autumn of your graduating year, and simply states ‘Z-score’ in the subject line. My cohort received this number yesterday.
If you were anything like me, you hovered over this email for a few good seconds before opening it. I was trembling from head to toe. Not from fear or dread, but really from a grim anticipation of what was to come.
The number confirmed my suspicions that my academic marks were not promising, and would probably be my downfall when applying for internships this year. I was so severely below-average I actually laughed.
For reasons too personal to divulge at the moment, I had failed an exam in my second year of medical school and applied for special consideration to get myself ‘over-the-line’. I knew it had impacted quite significantly on my marks, and the reality was that all my subsequent efforts to boost my academic standing and individual morale did little to offset the damage of that failing grade.
As such, this is where we are today. Every person has received their Z-score in the medical school. Now comes the time when we will half-heartedly (or whole-heartedly) try to sell ourselves and our best attributes to the services that will take us.
Don’t get me wrong, I typically find myself flabbergasted by the indubitable talent, intelligence, stamina and wit of the people around me in medical school. Everyone is excellent, and everyone is deserving. Sometime within this degree (and maybe multiple times a year), you will have the simultaneously amazing and devastating epiphany that your peers are not just book-smart, but people-smart and street-smart too. Some have been cultivating a hundred extracurricular skills, and fifty other secret talents. These hardworking individuals deserve commendation, because they are working the grind with their heads-down silently. Sometimes their excellence spills over more conspicuously, and you realise just how incredible these people are.
Let me reassure you, I am not about to lament in a 'woe is me' fashion. I know that this is just how life is. It is unhealthy and unwise to compare ourselves to the next person; especially when they appear to be the ‘whole package’ or the ‘triple threat’ of academic excellence, interpersonal charisma and leadership prowess. We are bound to encounter outstanding and prodigious individuals in every industry and aspect of life; not just medicine.
I'm writing this now with no real understanding of how my Z-score will impact my future career directions, or indeed my entire life trajectory. Things are definitely going to get interesting. This is perhaps a wake-up call that I should be reassessing my (now very limited) options.
I will try to update my reflections on this whole internship journey as we go along. Maybe writing about the path towards internship will provide some clarity for myself and for any readers who stumble upon this in the future. Who knows. Suddenly I feel like the tiniest most insignificant pearl in the world's biggest oyster.
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